Edwin Rodriguez feels he’s got Andre Ward rattled

Playing old head games

Credit: AP

AT ARM’S LENGTH: Edwin Rodriguez throws a left jab at Don George during a bout in 2012. The Worcester native will take on Andre Ward in a WBA super middleweight title match tomorrow in Ontario, Calif.

ONTARIO, Calif. — Edwin Rodriguez was where he wanted to be yesterday at the Citizens Business Bank Arena just south of Los Angeles. He was in Andre Ward’s head. Two days from now, he wants to be in his face.

At the end of the usual pre-fight press conference to hype tomorrow night’s WBA super middleweight title fight between them, the promoters called for the traditional faceoff. Fighters have been doing this since the Roman poet Virgil was covering boxing, so this was nothing new for either man.

What was new was Ward’s response.

Normally reserved and well mannered, Ward talked smack as Rodriguez informed him he was less than 72 hours from experiencing something he hadn’t in 17 years — the sting of defeat.

A devout man of God, Ward has labeled himself “S.O.G.,” meaning son of God, and generally has chosen to walk quietly through life — except when he hears a bell ring. To some the nickname seems a bit presumptuous, Jesus being the only known son of God in the Christian faith, while the rest of us are merely children of God.

That was one of the points Rodriguez was making yesterday when Ward began chirping back as if he’d been studying Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s press conferences.

Since trash talk is a staple of boxing that might not seem like anything of import, but because Ward never does it, Rodriguez’ trainer, Ronnie Shields, nodded and smiled like the Cheshire Cat. Fighters who act out of character, he knows, have something on their mind beside victory.

“Ward sounds like he’s trying to convince himself he’s ready,” Shields said after the two were finally separated by Ward’s minions. “That’s the first time I ever seen Andre Ward mouthing off. It’s because he’s worried. He didn’t want to fight Edwin Rodriguez. HBO made him do it.”

Whatever the truth of that, the undefeated champion certainly looked agitated and tense throughout the press conference, and his delivery of the fistic version of the Gettysburg Address to Rodriguez was the kind of out of character response to pressure that sometimes says more than it seems.

Time will tell if that’s true but there’s not much time left, the two facing off at 10 p.m. tomorrow on HBO. For Rodriguez, that will be the fulfillment of a dream that began when he was 13 and a lonely Dominican kid transplanted to Worcester to rejoin his family.

Over time, his Dominican dream of playing baseball faded and a new one grew. He would become an Olympic champion like Ward, who is the last American to win a gold medal in boxing.

That dream was derailed however by the premature birth of Rodriguez’ two oldest children, each weighing barely a pound when they were born in 2006 more than four months early. Against all odds they survived, but Rodriguez missed his Olympic chance in favor of fighting for his children, who spent 122 days at UMass Medical Center but today, despite initial grim doctors’ warnings, are happy 7-year-olds. They face some challenges but, like their dad, they fight back.

Tomorrow night, Rodriguez will fight for both of them, as well as for his newly born third child and his wife Stephanie. But most of all, he will fight for his dream — with only Ward standing in his way.

Yesterday, as they stood jawing, it seemed Ward was wrestling more with a nightmare than a dream, a nightmare perhaps born from a 14-month layoff after shoulder surgery. Even someone who last lost a boxing match 17 years ago at the age of 12 would not choose someone like Rodriguez (24-0, 16 KOs) for his first return bout, and the pressure of that seemed to show as Ward jabbered away about how disrespected and underrated he is — even though he’s widely considered the No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter in the world behind Mayweather, and is universally accepted as the true 168-pound champion.

It doesn’t matter that he officially holds only the WBA and RING super middleweight titles. Ward is a fighter who no longer needs belts to prove his place in boxing. But yesterday, you wondered if he wanted that place to be inside the Citizens Business Bank Arena with Rodriguez.

“Show me!,” he kept saying to Rodriguez. “Show me!” He said a few other things one might not expect from the S.O.G., but the S.O.G. may be feeling a little pressure. Hey, it happens.

“I think we got to him,” Rodriguez said with a satisfied air, as if he’d just won Round 1 from Ward (26-0, 14 KOs). “This guy acts like he’s better than everybody else. I think all the (mandatory) drug testing and the layoff got to him.

Rodriguez is the underdog of course, but he’s been that most of his life. Same was true of Edwin Jr. and Serena since the day they were born — two little fighters who will be watching from home tomorrow night to see if their dad’s dream turns out to be Andre Ward’s nightmare.